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Vulture's latest edition of The Star Market is dedicated to the career of Mrs Justin Timberlake. Their assessment isn't super flattering, at least not professionally. There are of course several mentions of who she's married to and how beautiful she is but on the matter of the work, and whether or not the work has any value, well...
Citing comments from industry producers, agents, and publicists, the word on Mrs Timberlake is that "she's a lovely face and gets you some publicity....(She and Jessica Alba) they're pretty faces who've yet to score. But she will get booked on Live! With Kelly and Michael."
A "high level" PR flack went so far as to say that it was a mystery why Mrs Timberlake is famous.
"Dating Justin is a big part of her appeal, but the work does have to speak for itself."
The publicist posited that perhaps it was her agent that was making bad decisions. Another agent, when asked whether or not she'd be a good client, explained:
"She's beautiful. She's a celebrity. But would I sign her? She's a hard one for me. I probably would, because our agency needs people who [always] work. But do I think she can go all the way? I don't think so. I don't think she's an 'actor.'"
Television, of course.
Vulture's final recommendation:
If we were running Biel's career, we'd try to get her a flashy guest-starring arc on a hot TV drama that would be happy to have her play against type. (Ryan Murphy, have you figured out casting for season three of American Horror Story?) If, in so doing, she can successfully convince casting directors to take her seriously for unusual big-screen roles, then all the better. And if it doesn't work out? Well, Ryan Reynolds will always need someone to woo (in a romcom).
Mrs Timberlake clearly doesn't agree. As she says in the January issue of ELLE:
"My goal now is to work with great directors. Small role, big role, medium-size role—it doesn't matter. I just want to work with someone who's going to push me to a scary, exciting place that I've never been before."
As for the ELLE photos, Mrs Timberlake was styled by Joe Zee, and well. It's high fashion, but not the way she tries high fashion. Zee is working with her body, and the body-con shots of her are the ones that work best -- in a bed with no pants on, in a midriff baring bra top, and a wool knit fitted Alaia. A huge improvement on this and, oh God, this.
Click here to read the Vulture Star Market on Mrs Timberlake.
Click here for more of Mrs Timberlake in ELLE.


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Rule #1 - Be Patient - Rule #2 - Don't ask when, if you don't contribute - Rule #3 - You have coding skills - LinuxMCE's small brother is available: http://www.agocontrol.com
Found out there are no stock numbers on discontinued items. The fellow there told me that they are only at corporate stores and not franchise stores. I have looked at other stores but have not found any more z-wave stuff. Randy
Just wanted to let everyone know. I found at our local Radio Shack GE Z-wave dimmers for $14.00, Outdoor Z wave switches for 9.99 and Lamp modules for 9.99. They were marked for clearance and the guy said there should be the same offerings at other stores. I hope this post is not inappropriate. I dont work for Radio Shack or anything. Randy

subset: commoncrawl


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Alabama's 200th birthday is coming up, and the state is looking for someone to be in charge of the party.
Directors of the Alabama Bicentennial Commission are now accepting resumes for the position of executive director.
The vice chairman of the commission, state Tourism Director Lee Sentell, said Saturday the celebration will culminate in 2019. That's the 200th anniversary of Alabama's establishment as a state in 1819.
Sentell says the commission is looking for someone with experience in non-profit organizations and event marketing. Directors also hope to find someone with in-depth knowledge of Alabama history. The job begins Jan. 1.
The salary for the position isn't yet set.
Legislators established the Bicentennial Commission earlier this year.


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Where Our Focus Should Be
19 August 2004
The following letter ran in yesterday's Wall Street Journal. subscription may be required
Strength at Home
By BEN STEIN
August 18, 2004; Page A10(This is a letter I wrote to the newsletter of an Army unit called The Strykers, stationed in Iraq out of Ft. Lewis, Wash. The editor asked me what I would say to make the wives feel appreciated while their husbands are in Iraq. This is what I wrote to one soldier's wife.)
Dear Karen,
I have a great life. I have a wife I adore, a son who is a lazy teenager but I adore him, too. We live in a house with two dogs and four cats. We live in peace. We can worship as we please. We can say what we want. We can walk the streets in safety. We can vote. We can work wherever we want and buy whatever we want. When we sleep, we sleep in peace. When we wake up, it is to the sounds of birds.
All of this, every bit of it, is thanks to your husband, his brave fellow soldiers, and to the wives who keep the home fires burning while the soldiers are away protecting my family and 140 million other families. They protect Republicans and Democrats, Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists. They protect white, black, yellow, brown and everyone in between. They protect gays and straights, rich and poor.
And none of it could happen without…
...the Army wives, Marine wives, Navy wives, Air Force wives—or husbands—who go to sleep tired and lonely, wake up tired and lonely, and go through the day with a smile on their faces. They feed the kids, put up with the teenagers' surliness, the bills that never stop piling up, the desperate hours when the plumbing breaks and there is no husband to fix it, and the even more desperate hours after the kids have gone to bed, the dishes have been done, the bills have been paid, and the wives realize that they will be sleeping alone—again, for the 300th night in a row.The wives keep up the fight even when they have to move every couple of years, even when their checks are late, even when they have to make a whole new set of friends every time they move.
And they keep up the fight to keep the family whole even when they feel a lump of dread every time they turn on the news, every time they switch on the computer, every time the phone rings and every time—worst of all—the doorbell rings. Every one of those events—which might mean a baseball score or a weather forecast or a FedEx man to me and my wife—might mean the news that the man they love, the man they have married for better or worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, is now parted from them forever.
These women will never be on the cover of People. They will never be on the tabloid shows on TV about movie stars. But they are the power and the strength that keep America going. Without them, we are nothing at all. With them, we can do everything.
They are the glue that holds the nation together, stronger than politicians, stronger than talking heads, stronger than al Qaeda.
They deserve all the honor and love a nation can give. They have my prayers, and my wife's, every morning and every night.
Love, and I do mean Love, Ben.
Mr. Stein, a television personality and writer, is co-author with Phil DeMuth of "Can America Survive," forthcoming from Hay House.
Filed under: Thinking


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Integrated Circuit Lead Cosmetic Inspection
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10:00 a.m.
10:15 a.m.
10:30 a.m.
Panel #1: Private Sector Small Business Finance
This panel is designed to address key themes and issues that emerged from the Federal Reserve System series related to private sector small business financing.
Moderator: Kausar Hamdani, Senior Vice President and Community Affairs Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of New York
- Kevin Watters, CEO Business Banking, JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
- Denise Pickett, Executive Vice President, American Express OPEN Product Management, Acquisition, and Project Resource Team
- Jack Hopkins, President and CEO, CorTrust Bank, N.A., and, Director, Independent Community Bankers of America
- Julie Stackhouse, Senior Vice President and Managing Officer, Banking Supervision, Discount Window Lending, and Community Affairs, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
- Todd McCracken, President and CEO, National Small Business Association
11:45 a.m.
1:15 p.m.
Panel #2: Public and Nonprofit Sector Small Business Finance
This panel is designed to address key themes and issues that emerged from the Federal Reserve System series related to public and nonprofit small business financing.
Moderator: Todd Greene, Vice President and Community Affairs Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
- Jim Hammersley, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, U.S. Small Business Administration
- Don Graves, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Small Business, Housing, and Community Development, U.S. Department of the Treasury
- Lesia Bates Moss, President, Seedco Financial Services
- Javier Palomarez, President and CEO, U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
2:45 p.m.
Panel #3: The Importance of Research and Data in Understanding Small Business Financing Issues
This panel is designed to address what information is currently available from existing data sources, what data gaps remain, and what policy implications may exist for improving understanding of immediate and intermediate credit needs of small businesses.
Moderator: Kimberly Zeuli, Assistant Vice President and Community Affairs Officer, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
- Bill Dunkelberg, Professor of Economics, Temple University School of Business and Management
- Zoltan Acs, Chief Economist, Office of the Chief Counsel, U.S. Small Business Administration
- William (Denny) Dennis, Senior Research Fellow, National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation
- Scott Shane, Professor of Economics, Case Western Reserve University, and Visiting Scholar, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland
4:15 p.m.
Panel #4: Next Steps in Addressing the Financing Needs of Small Businesses
Panelists will share their perspectives on key ideas and next steps emerging from the day's earlier panels.
Moderator: Joseph Firschein, Assistant Director and Community Affairs Officer, Board of Governors
- Sabeth Siddique, Assistant Director, Division of Banking Supervision and Regulation, Board of Governors
- Robert (Robb) Hilson, Senior Vice President, Global Commercial Banking, Bank of America Corporation
- Dan Betancourt, President and CEO, Community First Fund
- Bill Bynum, CEO, Enterprise Corporation of the Delta and Hope Community Credit Union
- Ginger Lew, Senior Counselor to the White House National Economic Council and the SBA Administrator


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The Blame Game Begins: Who Will Be Held Responsible for Creating the Afghan "Vertically Integrated Criminal" Government?
Last Sunday, the Beltway professed to be shocked — shocked!! — that the CIA has been bribing Hamid Karzai for years.
Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington's exit strategy from Afghanistan.
"The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan," one American official said, "was the United States."
Fred Kaplan, author of a fawning David Petraeus biography, described how Petraeus tried to fix that corruption but was stymied by practicality.
Petraeus was impressed with their analysis but found their proposals impractical. First, he couldn't simply bypass Karzai. One of his strategic goals was to help stabilize Afghanistan. Overhauling the districts' governing boards and transferring power to new officials—who may themselves just be a new array of warlords—was hardly a recipe for stability. Second, the plan would undermine another strategic goal—protecting the Afghan population. The local officials who were taking bribes and extorting merchants were also helping out with local security, sometimes guarding convoys of NATO supply trucks. If the cash spigot were shut off, they might let the Taliban attack those trucks, maybe even join in.
Then Sarah Chayes, one of the civilian advisors who fought against Afghan corruption in the transition period from Stanley McChrystal to Petraeus, wrote an account of what Petraeus really did.
Our PowerPoint presentation spelling out this plan ran to more than 40 slides. We selected a dozen we really planned to brief, but at a meeting with the entire command staff, General Petraeus read through every one. With a calculated flourish, he marked a check on each page as he turned it over. Petraeus was on board.
But when he stood up to address the assembled brass, Petraeus seemed to skip past — or even argue against — the slides we had prepared explaining the new governance approach. We were stunned. What had happened? Had we misunderstood? Had he changed his mind?
For another month, we kept at it; I hammered out a detailed implementation of our general concept to be employed in Kandahar province, alongside the troop surge. But by mid-September 2010, it was clear to me that Petraeus had no intention of implementing it, or of pursuing any substantive anti-corruption initiative at all. Four months later, in an intense interagency struggle over the language of a document spelling out objectives for Afghanistan by 2015, the U.S. government, at the cabinet level, explicitly reached the same decision.
That was the moment I understood the Afghanistan mission could not succeed.
Like Kagan, Chayes ultimately blames CIA. But she does so, specifically, in the context of the attempted July 2010 arrest of the CIA's bagman, Muhammad Zia Salehi.
I spent weeks wracking my brain, trying to account for the about-face. Eventually, after a glance in my calendar to confirm the dates, it came to me. It was the Salehi arrest. The Salehi arrest had changed everything.
Throughout the unfolding investigation, two senior U.S. officials have told me, through Salehi's arrest and release after a few hours of police detention, CIA personnel never mentioned their relationship with him. Even afterwards, despite pressure in Kabul and Washington, the CIA refused to provide the ambassador or the key cabinet officials a list of Afghans they were paying. The CIA station chief in Kabul continued to hold private meetings with Karzai, with no other U.S. officials present.
So whom did Salehi call from his jail cell the afternoon of his arrest? Was it Karzai, as many presumed at the time? Or was it the CIA station chief?
However lethal our bribes to Karzai have been to our so-called strategy in Afghanistan (though I wonder: have they simply forestalled an all-out civil war?), he's still going to proudly receive the cash.
"Yes, we received cash from the CIA for the past 10 years. It was very useful, and we are very thankful for this aid," the president said during a news conference Saturday in Kabul.
"Yesterday, I thanked the CIA's chief in Kabul and I requested their continued help, and they promised that they will continue."
If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it should.
That's because much of this dispute played out in reporting at the time. After NYT first reported CIA's ties to Salehi a month after the attempted arrest in 2010 — and quoted one official saying "Fighting corruption is the very definition of mission creep" — the WaPo reported more anonymous sources almost boasting of the bribes (and reminding they went back to the mujahadeen era). A month later, the WaPo quoted several anonymous military officials (in an article that quoted then Afghan Commander David Petraeus and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the record), anxious to show progress by that December, saying they had to tolerate some corruption.
Military officials in the region have concluded that the Taliban's insurgency is the most pressing threat to stability in some areas and that a sweeping effort to drive out corruption could create chaos and a governance vacuum that the Taliban could exploit.
"There are areas where you need strong leadership, and some of those leaders are not entirely pure," said a senior defense official. "But they can help us be more effective in going after the primary threat, which is the Taliban."
Just a week after that WaPo article, another reported that Obama's top national security aides — not just the CIA — were reaching a consensus that cracking down on corruption would impede our efforts to "achieve our principal goals."
But the officials said there is a growing consensus that key corruption cases against people in Karzai's government should be resolved with face-saving compromises behind closed doors instead of public prosecutions.
"The current approach is not tenable," said an administration official who, like others interviewed, agreed to discuss internal deliberations only on the condition of anonymity. "What will we get out of it? We'll arrest a few mid-level Afghans, but we'll lose our ability to operate there and achieve our principal goals."
It was a view shared by officials in Afghanistan.
There is a growing view at the U.S. and NATO headquarters in Kabul that "the law enforcement approach to corruption mucks up our strategic interests," said the U.S. official there.
The following year, in January 2011, when the Beltway professed to be shocked — shocked!! — that the Kabul Bank had "lost" $900 million, similar hints came out. The last two paragraphs of the NYT's account, for example, hinted that we couldn't attack Kabul Bank directly because it would reveal that we've been propping up a bunch of crooks (and blowing millions to have Karzai "re-elected" in an obviously fraudulent election).
Kabul Bank has extensive links to senior people in the Afghan government. In addition to Mahmoud Karzai, other shareholders included Haseen Fahim, the brother of the first vice president, and several associates of the family from the north of Afghanistan. Afghan officials said the bank poured millions into President Karzai's election campaign.
It is the loans and personal grants made by the bank to powerful people, including government ministers, that could prove the most explosive, Western and Afghan officials said. "If people who are thought to be clean and who were held up as 'good' by Western countries suddenly are caught with their fingers in the till, it will cause questions from donors," said a Western official in Kabul. "They will say, 'Why are we here?' "
Dexter Filkins provided far more detail of the many top Karzai officials who were on the take.
The evidence, according to American officials close to the inquiry [into the collapse of the Kabul Bank], appears to implicate dozens of Afghan officials and businessmen, many of them, like [Karzai's finance minister and campaign treasurer, Omar] Zakhilwal, among Karzai's closest advisers, with regulatory responsibilities over the Afghan financial system. Among the others are Afghans regarded by American officials as among the most capable in Karzai's government: Farouk Wardak, the Minister of Education; Yunus Qanooni, the speaker of the Afghan parliament; and Haneef Atmar, the former Minister of the Interior.
"Just straight bribes," a senior NATO officer said of the payments to Afghan officials.
Filkins also made it clear Karzai — and with him, the US — decided to stop pursuing corruption because Salehi threatened to expose everything.
Salehi telephoned Karzai from his jail cell. "He told Karzai, 'If I spend one night in jail, I'll bring the whole thing down,' " the Western official recalled.
So forgive me if I'm dubious of the professed shock — shock!! — coming from Beltway figures who presumably have been following this for three years.
What's new is not knowledge of Karzai's corruption. Indeed, as the ease with which Karzai speaks of ordering up the Kabul Station Chief to continue the bribes make clear, all this is not secret in the least.
What's new, apparently, is an attempt to blame all this — and with it, our imminent failure in Afghanistan — exclusively on the CIA.
I confess, I'm a little confused how you can cast blame exclusively on the CIA in an administration where the Secretary of Defense when these decisions were made was a former CIA head who oversaw the earlier generation of such bribes in Afghanistan, the Afghan Commander would become the CIA Director, the CIA Director would become the Secretary of Defense, and Obama's top counterterrorism advisor, who had already overseen his share of bribes while at CIA, and would go on to become the CIA Director. In an Administration where everyone is a former or future participant in CIA's bribery, it's sort of pointless to try to cast blame exclusively on the CIA.
The other problem with this tale is the claim that bribery is now interfering with our exit strategy.
Back in 2010, when tolerating Afghan corruption became the formal policy of the Obama Administration, the entire rationale was that tolerating corruption would help American focus on its so-called strategic goals. Only, in truth, they weren't so much strategic goals as a hope to claim political success for all the top figures involved, from the Generals on up to the Cabinet Members and the President. And now that the game of musical chairs has advanced three rounds and failure seems assured, the various parties are attempting to place blame for a decision they, at the very least, ultimately agreed to (interestingly, Hillary was perhaps the most vocal against this organized bribery at the time; perhaps she realized she was the only one whose time horizon would have to account for this failure).
Besides, I'm not sure why the Beltway gets to feign shock that Afghanistan has a system of legalized corruption. While Karzai's corruption may be more blatant than our own, it's not like the Beltway has fought against its own system of legal influence peddling.


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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- As President Obama marks his 100th day in office, most recent national polls indicate that more than six in 10 Americans approve of the job he's doing as president.
Polls reflect that most Americans approve of President Obama's performance during his first 100 days in office.
According to a CNN poll of polls compiled Wednesday, 63 percent said they approve of how Obama is handling his duties. Twenty-nine percent disapprove. The rating is down 3 percentage points from CNN's previous poll of polls, which was compiled Sunday.
The president's approval rating stood at 64 percent in a CNN poll of polls in January shortly after his inauguration.
"The number of Americans who think Obama has the right personal qualities to be president has gone up since the campaign last fall," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director. "That wasn't true for George W. Bush eight years ago, and it may be one reason why Obama's approval rating is still in the 60s."
How does Obama compare with his predecessors around the first 100-days mark?
Bush stood at 62 percent in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll in April 2001; Bill Clinton at 55 percent in a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll in April 1993; George H.W. Bush at 58 percent in a Gallup Poll from April 1989; and Ronald Reagan at 67 percent in a Gallup Poll in April 1981.
"The 100-day mark tends to fall during a period when Americans are still evaluating a new president. The danger period for most presidents comes later in their first year in office," Holland said.
"Bill Clinton, for example, still had good marks after his first 100 days, but his approval rating had tanked by June of 1993. Ronald Reagan's approval rating stayed over 50 percent until November of his first year in office, but once it slipped below that mark, it stayed under 50 percent for two years. So Obama's current rating certainly does not indicate that he is out of the woods yet."
The most recent edition of the CNN poll of polls is an average of seven national surveys taken over the past week: CNN/Opinion Research Corp. (April 23-26), ABC/Washington Post (April 21-24), Fox/Opinion Dynamics (April 22-23), CBS/The New York Times (April 22-26), Marist (April 21-23), Quinnipiac (April 21-27) and the Gallup tracking poll (April 25-27). iReport.com: Grade the first 100 days
The poll of polls does not have a sampling error.
All About Barack Obama


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The Algeciras Conference was held as a result of the First Moroccan Crisis that started in 1905. The conference at Algeciras started on January 16th 1906 and all the major European powers were represented there as well as the Americans. The Algeciras Conference had one aim: to decide what was to be done with regards to Morocco, one of the few African nations that had not been taken over by a European power.
The two main protagonists at Algeciras were France and Germany. However, it soon became very clear to Germany that other European powers had sided with France – Britain, Spain and Italy had all come to a prior agreement as to what should happen to Morocco. These four nations had decided which Moroccan cities would be governed by which European power: Casablanca, Rabat and Larache. For example, Tangier was to be governed by a Franco-Spanish military force commanded by a Frenchman. None of this had been put before the Germans and their delegation felt as if it had been deliberately left out of the discussions – which, in fact, it had.
Ironically, this did nothing to harm European relations as Wilhelm II had a new idea as to how Europe should diplomatically proceed. Despite the obvious delicate relationship between Germany and France, Wilhelm wanted to bring France into an alliance. While Wilhelm may have had a huge ego which some in Europe knew how to play on, he was not a complete fool with regards to diplomatic niceties. Wilhelm's plan was simple. By agreeing to many of the French demands in Morocco, he would bring them into a full alliance with Germany. Coupled with this would be a third nation – Russia. At this time Russia had recently lost a war to Japan and had experienced the 1905 Revolution. Wilhelm believed, with some justification, that Nicholas II of Russia needed to be seen as a European 'big player' and that an alliance between Germany, France and Russia would satiate this desire and give the impression to the Tsar that Russia was still seen as an important ally by the major European players. So Wilhelm's conciliatory gestures at Algeciras had a purpose to them. But what was that purpose? Wilhelm wanted to diplomatically isolate Great Britain, which he believed was Germany's biggest rival in Europe – economically and militarily. If France and Russia were tied to Germany, Great Britain would be left with Spain and Italy – neither of whom were seen as major powers in the same league as France and Russia.
The German delegation at Algeciras was encouraged by Berlin to offer more than the French had asked for with regards to Morocco. Or they were ordered to agree to suggestions made by Rouvier. For example, Rouvier suggested that after three to four years after a signed agreement at Algeciras, France should get a police mandate over the whole of Morocco. The German delegation agreed with this but German Chancellor von Bülow did not as he was not privy to the fact that it had come from Rouvier. In fact, Wilhelm II criticised von Bülow when the Chancellor openly spoke out in favour of a more hard-line approach to France over the Morocco issue. By now Wilhelm was looking for a quadruple alliance as he wanted to bring Turkey into his plans. He did not want anything to endanger his plans and he believed that von Bülow's remarks about the French would do just this.
The Algeciras Conference became a lot more than a conference on Morocco. The historian D C Watt believes that Morocco actually became of secondary importance as the major powers jockeyed to get alliances wrapped up. On paper, Wilhelm's plan of either a triple or quadruple alliance made sound sense as if either of them ever came to fruition, Great Britain would have undoubtedly become diplomatically isolated. However, the plan had two weaknesses. The first was the constant lack of trust between the players; after the numerous verbal battles between France and Germany, it must have come as something of a shock for the French to find that they had a prospective ally in Germany and that Germany was actively courting this. The second was Great Britain who in January 1906 got a new Liberal government. The new Foreign Secretary was Sir Edward Grey, who from 1892 to 1895 had gained great experience as to how German foreign policy worked when he was an Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office.
Grey realised that Britain would be isolated from the European great powers if Germany's plan worked out. Grey also knew that France was the key player in the plan. Therefore he approached the French ambassador in London, Jules Cambon, and told him that France could expect British help if the Algeciras Conference broke down with all issues unresolved and Germany threatened France. Grey would not give a specific statement that this support equated to military support but he did inform Cambon about the secret contacts between the British and French military staffs that had been occurring – meetings that were kept secret from the whole British Cabinet until 1911. Cambon informed Paris that France could expect full British support throughout the negotiations at Algeciras. This was the first breakdown in the German plan to bring France into an alliance.
The conference itself did not go well. Three camps appeared: France, Britain, Russia and Spain against Austria-Hungary and Italy while Germany appeared isolated by herself. Wilhelm's plan disappeared during the conference. Even Austria-Hungary told Germany to act less like a bully as to them the Germans wanted every decision on their terms.
It is now known the von Bülow believed as early as February 1906 that there would be no successful outcome at Algeciras and that the only thing he had to do was to save Germany's prestige. On March 27th, he accepted an Austrian proposal that the policing of Moroccan ports should be left to the French and Spanish who, in turn, would be overseen by a Swiss inspector who would report back to the Sultan. The Algeciras Conference ended on April 7th 1906.
The Germans got very little out of the conference. The plan to create a triple alliance or even a quadruple alliance to isolate Great Britain failed. Arguably, by the end of the conference, Britain and France had even closer ties to one another. A German presence in North Africa had also failed to materialise. In France, many nationalists saw Algeciras as a triumph. The French media portrayed Germany as an inferior nation, much to the concern of the more experienced politicians in Paris. In Germany, there was a belief that they had been outplayed by the British and French and blame was heaped on von Bülow. The German High Command revised the Schlieffen Plan accordingly and pushed for the government in Berlin to adopt a more aggressive stance if only to redeem Germany within Europe. It is probable that the failure of the German politicians at Algeciras led to an increase in the influence the military had over the Kaiser at the expense of politicians. Great Britain realised that she had to continue cultivating relations not only with France but with other European powers.
The Algeciras Conference may have 'resolved' the crisis in Morocco but it had another far more important impact: the outcome clearly defined Europe into certain camps. At this conference Germany publicly lost out. There were many in Berlin who promised that it would be the last time that this would happen. In future a diplomatic resolution would not even be considered as there were those who believed that Germany's military strength was such that diplomacy would not be needed in any future European disagreements.
May 2012


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Hello, Dublin
POSTED ON: March 28, 2013
Anyone entering the Foundation Building lobby on March 27 or 28 may have noticed a table strewn with books and ephemera, enticing cookies and two beckoning gentlemen. Rest assured they are not soliciting subscriptions to anything. They are instead Paul Kearns, an urban planner from Dublin, Ireland, and Moti Ruimy, an architect from Tel Aviv, Israel, who would like you to send a postcard to Dublin on their dime for a project they call "Postcards of Our City: New York to Dublin."
"It's an exchange between the two cities," Paul Kerns says. "We are encouraging New Yorkers to write their thoughts about New York on postcards that will be sent to addresses taken at random from the Dublin telephone book. So next week, thoughts or ideas or poems from New York will arrive there all at the same time." Kearns and Ruimy are co-authors of ReDrawing Dublin (Gandon Editions; 2010), "an architectural critique of Dublin," Kearns says. But the approach looks more like a book of graphic design with the bulk of it devoted to full pages of illustrations, charts, photographs or collage with short text overlaid. The postcards are of illustratons from the book. Some of the cards will become part of an exhibition, with their messages scanned and blown up for a gallery wall in Dublin.
"We are playing with the concept of a postcard. The images are of the city that is receiving the postcard," Kearns says. "The idea is to get Dubliners to reflect on their own city." Why from New York? "Because the two cities are historically linked," Kearns says, "but more the reason is that Irish architects and planners, probably without exception, love New York. But the planning profession in Dublin is stubbornly euro-centric. We are interested in that paradox."
They solicited Cooper Union's School of Architecture to provide the space because of its relationship with John Hejduk, Dean of the School from 1975 to 2000. "John Hejduk talks about what makes a city is the story of the place," Ruimy says, "the stories create the architecture. So on the front of the postcard is an image about the city and on the back is somebody writing something. It creates a narrative."
Paul Kearns imagines the reactions of the recipients will be mixed. "Hopefully because of the stamp and the handwriting, people will believe it is a postcard. But I imagine there will be a multitude of reactions. Some people will think it's an advertisement. Some people will have heard about the exhibition. But others will just read it and that's it."


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IBM and SAP: Looks like we're STUCK forever on the cloud highway
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway... Oh no, this is the road to Hell Amazon
Earnings from SAP and IBM – two giants in enterprise IT - proved that both companies are struggling to cope with the move to the cloud and show that success in hosted computing is receding for them.
While it's true that the big growth for SAP was in its cloud-related business – up 66 per cent for the fourth quarter and 158 per cent for the year, the company's core business, software sales, is not looking as healthy. Indeed, it grew by a relatively meagre two and three per cent for the quarter and year, respectively.
And unfortunately for SAP, it's the latter and support for the latter that comprises the lion's share of SAP's overall income.
Cloud makes just hundreds of millions of dollars for SAP compared to the billions it nets on the other stuff.
Clouds in the Big Blue skies...
But at least SAP is growing, unlike IBM. Big Blue took a mauling this week – total revenue was pulled down by plunging sales of the hard stuff.
IBM does have its mighty software cushion to fall back on - that grew 2.8 per cent for the quarter, lead by WebSphere middleware.
IBM has a toe in the cloud waters, with its Smart Cloud, but it's not swimming where it needs to be in the really growth-rich waters of hosting. That's where you get the boffo-profit-generating app and data offerings.
The longer customers stay and the more data they create in the cloud, the more money and, crucially, the more stable the revenue stream becomes over a long period of time.
IBM said it had earned $4.4bn on cloud "solutions" for the whole year – public, private, hybrid and SaaS – growing 64 per cent year on year.
That's more than SAP, but – alas for IBM – the vast majority of that was selling servers and software, mobile solutions. Just $1.7bn came from delivering services.
In other words, IBM is exactly where Oracle was a few years back when it thought it could get rich selling pick-axes and shovels to prospectors rather than go panning for gold itself. Oracle re-calibrated that strategy, by rolling out its own Java and database clouds.
IBM is now trying to change the revenue mix ratio with plans for more of its own hosting. It will spend $1.2bn on 40 data centres in addition to turning its Watson supercomputer/machine-learning experiment into an online platform for apps.
But this alone won't help IBM and it's chief problem is it needs to figure out what it will give potential customers beyond purely hosted server infrastructure.
That's what Amazon does, and Amazon made things harder for IBM and everybody else in the cloud this week by announcing its 40th price cut on its AWS since the service went live.
If IBM hoped to make money from purely hosting, it's on a loser.
SAP: Give us another 2 years to hit those targets, mm?
SAP is also having to rethink things, but it has different challenges.
SAP has just pushed back its cloud and company-wide growth targets by two years, to 2017.
SAP's goal is now not for €2.0bn ($2.7bn) from cloud by 2015 but for between €3.0bn ($4bn) and €3.5bn ($4.7bn) and €22bn ($29.7bn) total revenue by 2017. These numbers handily exclude all kinds of charges and costs that tend to ruin spreadsheets and good PR.
SAP CEO Bill McDermott tried to portray this push back as an accounting issue - the way cloud revenue is recognised - in a three-year cycle. Translated: cloud business signed up in 2013 and 2014 won't hit the balance sheet until 2014. Big growth in 2013 and 2014 will mean big recurring revenue in the form of stable subscriptions by 2017.
Ironically, what's likely to have pushed back the growth forecast is the continuing slowdown in SAP's core business sales or ERP and CRM.
As this is the majority of SAP's business, it stands to reason that continued slowness here will hit SAP's overall growth targets, and is likely why SAP is now encouraging the outside world to look to 2017 rather than 2015 as it's further away.
That said, cloud is hard – signing up and keeping customers in the enterprise is difficult, as Oracle and Salesforce have learned - which is likely why they hired scads of sales people to sell their clouds. It's especially hard for a company versed in selling traditional on-premises software.
SAP has had a fillip of new cloud money with the purchases of SuccessFactors and Ariba. It has also partnered with the Devil – hosting its apps on Amazon.
Cloud money by 2017 will come from the extension of SAP's ERP and CRM, from the already online businesses of SuccessFactors and Ariba, and through SAP partners like Accenture, which builds apps on the HANA Cloud Platform and pulls in revenues in the form of subscriptions, support and professional services. HANA, SAP's in-memory data architecture, is SAP's big hope: so that it can "become the cloud business powered by HANA".
"We will run entire businesses in the cloud powered by HANA," McDermott said.
That's a long way off – longer, I'd argue, than 2017. SAP has 253,500 customers with 750 on HANA and the majority using HANA on-premises - and not in the cloud. SAP's challenge is to flip existing users into cloud customers.
Still, SAP has given up on the notion of building its own data centres: it's riding on Amazon instead. SAP's job is pure growth.
IBM, meanwhile, is following a much harder path of building infrastructure, swallowing the costs and then growing - against Amazon. ®


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Erectile dysfunction is one of the most prevalent diabetes-induced complications in men; current estimates suggest that as many as 75% of men with diabetes will develop some degree of erectile dysfunction, and in many cases diabetics develop more severe forms of ED that are less responsive to standard drugs.
Now, in a study appearing in the March Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine have identified some of the molecular changes that accompany the onset of diabetes-induced ED, which may lead to markers that will help identify ED risk as well as new potential drug targets.
Mark Chance and colleagues used a proteomics approach to examine the relative abundance of proteins in the corpora (the expandable tissues along the length of the penis which fill with blood during erection) of diabetic rats at two different stages of progression: one week and two months after the onset of diabetes. By comparing these rats to healthy age-matched controls, they identified 57 proteins in the penile tissue that either increased or decreased during diabetes.
The candidate proteins revealed insights into the mechanics of ED; perhaps not surprisingly, collagen proteins that provide strength and stiffness were down-regulated in diabetes, as were proteins that transport sex hormones. Meanwhile, proteins involved in cell death (apoptosis) were up-regulated, as were many proteins related to fat metabolism, changes that might be related to narrowing or hardening of blood vessels.
Chance and colleagues note that the rat model they used in the study mimics many relevant features of human ED, and thus the identification of these 57 candidate proteins could open up further and more detailed studies into the relationship between diabetes and ED in humans, and also lead to diagnostic and drug targets.
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Regulators have approved the proposed $8 billion sale of the venerable New York Stock Exchange to a much younger futures exchange. The deal is a symbol of how financial markets are being increasingly reshaped by high technology.
The Securities and Exchange Commission disclosed Friday that it's authorized the takeover of the two-centuries-old NYSE's parent by Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange, or ICE. The rival acquiring company, founded in 2000, has expanded rapidly through acquisitions over the past decade.
The SEC said in a filing that it's determined that the merger of the exchanges would comply with securities laws and regulations.
The merger also must be approved by regulators in Europe. The NYSE's parent is NYSE Euronext, which includes stock exchanges in Europe. The European Commission, the executive body of the 28-nation European Union, gave its approval in June.
The deal is expected to close in the fall.
For each share of NYSE Euronext stock they own, shareholders would be able to choose either $33.12 in cash, about a quarter-share of ICE, or a combination of $11.27 in cash and around one-sixth of a share of ICE.
ICE's offer was valued at $8 billion when it was announced in December. Based on ICE's current share price, the deal would be worth about $10 billion.
ICE shares were up $1.12 at $181.47 in trading Friday. NYSE Euronext shares rose 22 cents to $42.07.
"We welcome the (SEC) decision," NYSE Euronext spokesman Rich Adamonis said.
ICE representatives didn't immediately return a call seeking comment.
ICE has said that little would change for the NYSE trading floor—known as the Big Board—at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in Manhattan's financial district. But the NYSE'S clout has been eroded by the rapid advance of technological and regulatory changes. Its importance today is mostly symbolic.
While brokerage fees for stock trading have declined, futures exchanges like ICE have retained solid profit margins. Futures contracts are written by exchanges and must be bought and sold in the same place—unlike stocks, which can be traded on any exchange.
Buyers of futures contract commit to buy something at a specified date and price. Futures can be used to lock in prices as a hedge against future price movements. They're also used by traders to speculate on prices.


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Jane Austen began writing the novel which later became Pride and Prejudice in October of 1796 and finished it by August of the following year; she was then twenty-one years old. Little is known of this early version of the story beyond its original title: First Impressions. No copy of that original is known to exist. Three months after Miss Austen completed work on the book, her father offered it to a publisher in the hope that it would make it into print. The publisher refused without ever having seen the manuscript.
Fortunately for all of her admirers, whether Austen was discouraged or not by her first rejection, she continued to write; though, it was not until the winter of 1811, fully fourteen years after finishing First Impressions, that she again picked up that manuscript and began revising it into the version we know today as Pride and Prejudice. This occurred in the wake of her first publishing success--the publication of Sense and Sensibility on 30 October 1811. Pride and Prejudice was far more fortunate than its earlier incarnation; it was accepted for publication and was presented to the world on 28 January 1813.
Jane Austen's name was never attached to any of her published novels during her lifetime, and the title page of Pride and Prejudice read only:
Chapter descriptions are designed to be very vague and cryptic. They are for people who are familiar with the book to help them find the chapter they want, and they are not designed for the student who might be looking for a quick way to get out of reading the novel.
Prepared by Ann Haker. © 2000 Copyright held by the author.


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**********UPDATE: Sorry the photos are no longer working! I have reposted all of the photos on my current blog. You can view the journal here: http://saturdaymorningvintage.typepad.com/blog/2013/06/2009-nyc-mixed-paper-journal.html THANK YOU!!**********
I took a little trip to New York last month and just finished a mixed paper journal that holds all of my pictures, tickets, brochures, and other mementos. Here is the finished product:
If you want to make your own to celebrate a recent trip or other special event, follow these simple steps.
Step #1: Collect tickets / brochures / postcards / other paper along the way.
Step #2: Document your trip on a variety of mixed papers.
Step #3: Label your photos.
You might notice I used both landscape and portrait style photos. I also used a mixture of color and black and white photos. The idea behind these mixed paper journals is to gather your memories in a fun and easy going manner. No need to be strict about which photos you can and cannot include.
Step #4: Combine your travel ephemera, mixed papers, and pictures.
You're done!!
A few extra notes:
For the cover I created a collage in Picasa, a free photo editing program from Google. I uploaded and printed it along with my other photos.
I usually use two binder rings to hold together my mixed paper journals. I added an extra ring for this one simply due to its size. It's packed full with over 40 photos, 20 written pages, and plenty of tickets / maps / brochures / postcards.
It might be a little tough to see, but the journal includes three index tabs which I labeled "1", "2", and "3" to correspond to the first, second, and third day of our trip. This helped to organize my very large journal.


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Hallelujah, Harvest, and Halloween Alternatives
Say you receive an invitation in the mail for a party on October 31. This party will include candy, costumes, and "illusion" (insert picture of a top hat, wand, and sparkly star). Would you assume you were just invited to a Hallelujah party? Probably not.
Yet, depending on where you live, you might see church banners with a similar invitation. Don't get me wrong. It's wonderful that churches are serving their communities by hosting these kinds of events. But the peculiar words on church signs this time of year might cause passersby to raise a curious brow—it does for this editorial eye, at least.
The traditions of the season (donning costumes, pumpkin-carving, and trick-or-treating) are, to some degree, tied to pagan beliefs. Yet Ken Samples asks "Could practices that were once associated with pagan superstition…be purely benign for people with a totally different motivation and intent?"
He argues that it's difficult to believe the "systematic collection of candy in a given neighborhood by pint-sized Spider-mans and Tinkerbells constitutes the promotion of an occult worldview or spiritistic racketeering."
But what of the name Halloween? It is derived from All Hallows' Eve, the evening preceding All Saints' Day, a Christianholiday. Why then would churches and faith communities embrace the traditions (with pagan roots) yet steer clear of the name (with Christian roots)? It seems the aversion, if even called for, is misplaced.
It stirs up a few questions, particularly as the day draws near and the church signs gain prominence.
Have we modified terminology to justify participating in a holiday we would otherwise deem depraved? If the holiday is depraved, should changing its name be enough to pacify our conscience? If, on the other hand, Halloween is harmless, then why not call it by its name?
What do you think?
Ken Samples presents some questions of his own when considering "The Tricky Topic of Halloween." And Take Two offers our take on Halloween, magic, and even fantasy.


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This article is also available and sold as a booklet.
This sermon series includes the following messages:
The following is an excerpt from The MacArthur New Testament Commentary on Matthew 7.
You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. So then, you will know them by their fruits. (Matthew 7:16–20)
After warning about false prophets, Jesus tells us what to watch for in identifying them. Because they are so extremely deceptive and dangerous ravenous spiritual and moral wolves in sheep's clothing-the Lord would hardly have left us without means of determining who they are.
Jesus assures us that we will know them by their fruits. A fruit tree may be beautiful, decorative, and offer pleasant shade in the summer. But its primary purpose is to bear fruit, and it is therefore judged by what it produces and not by how it looks. (That understanding is the key to interpreting John 15 properly.)
Similarly a prophet-used in this passage in the broadest sense of one who speaks for God-is judged by his life, not simply by his appearance or his words. The kind of person he really is cannot help being revealed. Some false prophets are noticeably spurious and only the most gullible person would be taken in by them. Others conceal their true nature with remarkable skill, and only careful observation will expose them for what they are. But there is a true assurance in the statement you will know them. There is no need to be deceived if we look closely.
It is the cleverly deceptive false prophet that Jesus is speaking about here. No one needs help in deciding that a tree is bad if it bears shriveled, discolored, and obviously rotten fruit-or no fruit at all. It is the tree that appears to bear good fruit, but does not, that is deceptive.
It is possible for grapes to be stuck on thorn bushes and for figs to be stuck on thistles. From a distance they might appear to be growing on real fruit trees. Because the fruit is genuine, naive persons might conclude that the tree itself also has to be genuine.
It is possible for real Christians to be taken in by false prophets. When believers are careless about study of and obedience to the Word, lazy about prayer, and uncritical about the things of God, it is easy for them to be deceived by someone who pretends to be orthodox-especially if he is pleasant, positive, and permissive. When that happens, they are in danger of becoming grapes on thorn bushes and figs on thistles. Satan loves to use God's own people to promote his evil work, seeking, if it were possible, even to snatch them from their heavenly Father (Matt. 24:24).
It is also possible for a tree itself to bear fruit that is colorful, well formed, and attractive, but which is bitter, distasteful, and even poisonous. That kind of bad tree with its bad fruit is much harder to judge than thorn bushes that have grapes on them or thistles that have figs on them. In the second case, both the tree and the fruit appear to be genuine. What it bears has to be examined carefully to determine if it is good fruit or bad fruit. A mature believe who has developed discernment can spot the bad tree and bad fruit (Heb. 5:14).
Judging the fruit of false prophets, of course, is not nearly so easy as judging fruit in an orchard. But from Scripture we discover at least three primary tests we can apply in order to know. They are in the areas of character, creed, and converts.
Our Lord closes this potent section with an affirming repetition of verse 16, so then, you will know them by their fruits. Thus we are once again called to be discerning when listening to preachers who call us to the broad way that leads to death and hell.


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With the question-begging epithet, the arguer uses biased (often emotional) language to persuade people rather than using logic.
One of the most common fallacies committed by evolutionists on the Internet is the fallacy of the question-begging epithet. This could be considered a specific sub-type of begging the question (the fallacy of merely assuming what one is trying to prove).
With the question-begging epithet, the arguer uses biased (often emotional) language to persuade people rather than using logic. For example, if a reporter said,
"This criminal is charged with violently murdering the innocent victim,"
she would be using a question-begging epithet because she has used biased language to make a case that is not yet logically established. It would have been more objective for her to say,
"This suspect is charged with killing the other person."
Some great examples of question-begging epithets can be found on some evolution internet sites—particularly forums or blogs. I saw one example where an evolutionist wrote,
"Our department is becoming infested with creationists."
The word infested is emotionally charged and portrays creationists in a bad light without making any argument for this. Another writer stated,
"To be a creationist, you'd have to ignore tons of scientific evidence."
This remark is the fallacy of the question-begging epithet because it uses biased language (and not logic) to suggest that scientific evidence supports evolution.
There is a place for emotional language. After all, language has other purposes than to make logical arguments. It can be used to inform, to question, to command, and to evoke. However, when people try to evoke an emotional response to persuade others of a point that is logically questionable, the fallacy of the question-begging epithet is committed.
Yelling or vulgar language during a debate is always an example of this fallacy. Many times people will turn up the vocal volume to compensate for a lack of cogency in their argument. Ironically, many of those who use mocking or vulgar language in forums seem to think that their rhetoric constitutes a good argument. Far from it. Such language is an indication of a serious lack of critical thinking skills.1
Question-begging epithets can be subtle. Consider this phrase: "evolution vs. creationism." By attaching -ism to the end of creation but not to evolution, the person is subtly suggesting that creation is merely a belief, whereas evolution is not. But he or she has made no argument for this.
"Creationists believe that the universe is young, but the best scientists tell us that it is billions of years old."
By using the adjective to describe those scientists who believe in an old universe, this argument uses biased language rather than logic to persuade. It is fallacious.
Here is another example:
"The Creation 'Museum' isn't about science at all, but is entirely about a peculiar, quirky, very specific interpretation of the Bible."
The author provided no support for this opinion; it is simply an emotional reaction. He also attempts to deride the Creation Museum by putting the word museum in quotes. His claim is nothing but a fallacious epithet. When people use sarcastic/sardonic statements in place of logic, they commit the fallacy of the question-begging epithet. For example,
"Yeah Tyrannosauridae were herbovirus [sic] too before The Fall [sic]. With razor sharp teeth to kill the tenacious shrubberies!"
Such statements are designed to stir people's emotions, thereby distracting them from the realization that no logical case has been made.
Another common example is when someone accuses an opponent of committing a logical fallacy when it is not the case. A false accusation of a logical fallacy is itself a logical fallacy. This might happen, for example, after a creationist has politely and cogently pointed out a number of fallacies in an evolutionist's reasoning, and then makes a good argument for creation. In an attempt to turn the tables, the evolutionist responds by saying,
"Well, that's a fallacy!"
But he has made no logical case that the creationist has indeed committed a fallacy, which makes the evolutionist's claim itself an arbitrary question-begging epithet.
In Ephesians 5:6 we read, "Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience." An evolutionist may be very emotionally committed to his position and may use biased (or mocking) language in an attempt to evoke a similar emotion in others. However, this is logically irrelevant to whether or not his belief is true.
When people use mere rhetoric ("empty words") without providing a logical reason for their position, we must cordially point out that they have not made a logical argument; they are simply being arbitrary. Conversely, Christians are to take the "high ground" and always give a good reason for the confidence within us (1 Peter 3:15).
Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.


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Nobody likes feeling tricked, least of all consumers. Which is why government officials are making sure apparel manufacturers know that rayon, by any other name, is still rayon.
Recently, Amazon, Leon Max, Inc., Macy's, Sears and its subsidiaries Kmart and Kmart.com agreed to pay $1.26 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they were selling apparel that was marked as bamboo, but was actually made of rayon.
[quote]Korin Felix, staff attorney for the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, says as a general matter companies must comply because not only is it the law, but it is also important for consumers to know what is in the textiles they purchase.
For starters, it affects costs and care," Felix says. "Also, some people have a philosophical reason for wanting all-natural fibers. Some people have allergies. Some people are buying for their babies. And some people want to know the fiber content because they're interested in green product. The point is to give them the information to make that choice. The way the rules and the law work is you have to disclose that to the consumer because they can't tell the difference just by feeling the fabric."
Almost two-thirds (59%) of consumers say they would be bothered if they found out an apparel item they purchased was not produced in an environmentally friendly way, according to the Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor™ Survey.
On top of being bothered, 40% of shoppers would turn around and blame the manufacturer if they found out their clothes were produced in a non-environmentally friendly way, according to the Cotton Incorporated 2013 Environment Survey.
Elizabeth Cline, journalist and author of "Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion," says both consumers and retailers are to blame for what is on the shelves.
"When the economy went bad, consumers became cheaper and cheaper, and stopped looking for quality — so retailers stopped selling it," Cline says. "Everyone chases the low price point, and it's difficult to resist."
Retailers and brands who are thinking of using substitutions should know 82% of consumers prefer apparel be made of cotton and cotton blends, according to Monitor data. And they are willing to pay a slightly higher price to keep cotton from being substituted with synthetic fibers in their underwear (61%), denim jeans and T-shirts (56%), sweatshirts (45%), dress shirts (41%) and casual pants (37%), the Monitor shows.
James Dion, retail consultant and author whose titles include "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Starting and Running a Retail Store," says the apparel industry has to keep in mind that there will always be a "slash and trash" consumer who "shops price first, second and third. It's their main component. And I believe there are more of them out there now who were driven by tough times."
When cotton prices rose a few years ago to historically high levels, some brands and merchants started substituting it with other materials to keep prices in check. But when supplies stabilized, so did prices.
Consumers have consistently made it clear they do not want man-made fibers standing in for cotton: 77% agree better quality garments are made from all natural fibers such as cotton, up from 74% in 2011, according to the Monitor. And more than half (55%) say they are willing to pay a premium for natural fibers like cotton, an increase from 52% in 2011.
When brands actually do switch out fibers, consumers take note. Nearly half of all shoppers (49%) say many of the clothes that used to be made from cotton now seem to be made from other fibers, consistent with responses in October 2011 (48%). Additionally, more than six out of 10 are concerned that retailers and brands may be substituting synthetic fibers for cotton in their underwear (63%), tees (63%) and jeans (63%).
Felix says this is why the Textiles Act exists. "This is information consumers can't obtain on their own. And that's why it's important it's provided up front and not misleading."
In 2009, the FTC brought its first set of cases against companies allegedly selling rayon textiles labeled as bamboo. In January 2010, the agency sent warning letters to 78 companies, including Amazon, Leon Max, Macy's, and Sears, concerning their continued mislabeling of rayon textiles as bamboo.
Bamboo claims have been the most rampant. But Felix says manufacturers have professed to have manufactured clothes they say are made from soy, coconut, and even corn.
"People don't wear corn kernels, soy beans or coconuts — unless they've been to Hawaii and have a coconut-shell bikini," she explains. "Man-made manufacturing is coming into play. That means at some point the material doesn't exist as a fiber but as a goo broken down by chemicals, which is then shot out through spinnerets to harden into a textile form."
Consequently, brands cannot use a natural name when listing the fiber content. "They must use the name the FTC has recognized," Felix says. "It tells consumers this is not actual soy, corn or bamboo, it's rayon. And there is a distinction."


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Friday, April 9, 2010
In which Stapleton argues for larger observation of rocks.
So if I am looking at this as a reference I will have to completely adjust the eye level. That gets really abstract and I can't hope to get an accurate reposition like rich Hollywood stars get with a 3D computer modeling program. But I don't need it, because I am going to design attractive shapes using only the broad ideas from the rocks. Herein follows a big idea, I hope I make it clear. I am referring to something like what Ives Gammell used to call the BIG LOOK.
I am going to notice the trends, or patterns, like the rocks get blue puddles on top and have some warm yellow facets that turn toward the viewer. I will use that red glow that "envelopes" the rocks, its like cherries down in the deep shadows. I will play that up for sure! There is also ultramarine down in those shadows which do all sort of run together. Look at how forcefully that big rock on the left juts out into the water. The furthest little rock in the distance has a wave shaped like a triangle hiding its base. And the upper part of that rock is green.
Those are large observations, rather than copying by studying out that this little piece of rock here goes next to the little detail there, and then next to that......... Do you see the difference? The design of the rocks will be mostly my own shapes, hopefully artistic, with some inflow of interesting facts from my references. Incidentally I generally have a a painting that I made on location as a jumping off point. My location sketches are too random and matter of fact to be called a real seascape in the grand sense of the word. That is an "engine", which is what the critics and academicians in the 19th century called the grand studio assembled creations of the salon era. I think a seascape should be an engine in that sense too, a crafted yet natural appearing arrangement that has a designed beauty greater than the randomness of a snapshot or an accurate study done in plein air.
I do sometimes get a sketch I make outside that can be morphed a little and work as a seascape, but generally I see them as tools for the production of largely synthetic pictures. All of the Vickerys and Waughs I have shown you were machined out in the shop by their makers.
14 comments:
- Sharon Weaver said...
From your blogs on seascapes this is my take: The seascape is the invention of the artist who must know the architecture of the waves to make an accurate depiction. As an artist it seems my work is never done.
- April 9, 2010 at 3:15 AM
- billspaintingmn said...
Like a master builder, you lay the foundation first, and build on that.
Or a Mistro that conducts his orchestra to make music.
Your painting is the sum of your understanding and creative energy.
Thanks Stape! I'm looking at my subject, (and myself) a bit differently. - April 9, 2010 at 8:48 AM
- billspaintingmn said...
I just now read your yesterday post
comments, Ha!
If I use seasalt will it tweek a more realistic look?
(I thought there she blows was when you spot a whale!?) - April 9, 2010 at 9:47 AM
- kev ferrara said...
Fascinating stuff. Thanks.
I like that term "engine." Is there a particular book that discusses the use of that term by the academicians? - April 9, 2010 at 10:51 AM
- Philip Koch said...
Good comment by Stape on the way he made an over all judgement about color in the rocks in that reference photo- cool tops and warmer color on the side. Whenever you can look out at something and make a meaningful generalization like that you're on your way to where you want to go.
- April 9, 2010 at 12:57 PM
- barbara b. land of boz said...
Stapleton, thank you for the reminder to look at the Big Picture
first. The urge to "photo-copy" is
hard to pass by in using reference material sometimes.
So when do we see the demos on your
seascapes? I'm glad that I saw you do one in person in Rolling Fork,Ms
It makes your posts on this subject easier to understand.
I urge one and all to take one of your workshops. It will be, money well spent. - April 9, 2010 at 3:54 PM
- Unknown said...
What I understand you to say is:
Analyze - observe, compare, etc.
Generalize - determine from those observations the big idea of any shape as to color, value,temperature, special feature, etc.
Particularize - take those generalizations and apply them to the particular painting and view you are working on. - April 9, 2010 at 4:44 PM
- billspaintingmn said...
Ok Stape, I did a Seastape in your honor.
I used an art book, and some seasalt. A pail of water and an air conditioner.
It's on my blog if you want to take a gander at it!
I think I will paint more of these,
there fun! - April 9, 2010 at 8:54 PM
- Stapleton Kearns said...
That is exactly it. Just like doing figures. Only more so imagine the figure being in constant motion.
........Stape - April 10, 2010 at 3:13 AM
- Stapleton Kearns said...
I think seascapes are a lot of fun. Put more ice in the water!...............Stape - April 10, 2010 at 3:14 AM
- Stapleton Kearns said...
I don't know of a book to send you to. But you should read Kenyon Cox to see that line of thinking.He wrote the classic point of view. It can be read online for free.
................Stape - April 10, 2010 at 3:16 AM
- Stapleton Kearns said...
We have to have a number of different ways of seeing in the toolkit.
.......Stape - April 10, 2010 at 3:17 AM
- Stapleton Kearns said...
I will do a demo in a couple of weeks. I am need to do a bunch of prep work first.
...............Stape - April 10, 2010 at 3:18 AM
- Stapleton Kearns said...
Thank you. I appreciate the compliment. I will do a demo soon.
................Stape - April 10, 2010 at 3:19 AM


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NEW FOR FRIDAY: Search Still Coming Up Empty For Local Missing Woman
BERLIN — The search continued this week for an elderly Berlin woman with dementia and short-term memory loss last seen at her residence on Carefree Lane in Berlin near South Point on Memorial Day.
Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, May 28, the Worcester County Sheriff's Office received a missing persons report on Helen Stephanie David, 77, of Berlin, from her son Ryan Putney. David lives in the South Point area and was last seen by family members shortly after 3 p.m. on Monday, May 27. According to Putney, David suffers from dementia and short-term memory loss.
Throughout last week and in the days since, an extensive search has been conducted in the South Point area and along the Route 611 corridor on the ground, by air and in the water and marshes to no avail. At the height of the search two weeks ago, local law enforcement agencies were assisted by the Civil Air Patrol and search and rescue teams from as far away as the western shore and an army of citizen volunteers combed the woods and properties around South Point by flashlight.
While the effort has been curtailed somewhat as nearly three weeks have now passed, local law enforcement agencies, with assistance from outside sources, continue to search in earnest for the missing woman.
Last Sunday, for example, the Calvert County Search and Rescue teams searched the area along South Point Rd. and the residence on Carefree Lane. The effort included search and rescue dogs and several personnel on foot to no avail.
Again on Tuesday, the Maryland State Police and Maryland Natural Resources Police (NRP) brought in their Search Management Teams and conducted a detailed grid search of the immediate area. The search will continue this weekend as Worcester County Sheriff's Deputies will be out in force again on ATVs, boats and on foot checking for any signs of David.
David is about 5'6" tall and around 142 pound with salt-and-pepper hair of medium length. When last seen, she was wearing a blue and white blouse with flowers, light blue Capri-style pants, two pairs of white socks and possibly tan Burkenstock sandals.
Anyone with information about David's whereabouts is urged to contact the Sheriff's Office at 410-632-1111.


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Live Feeds FeedForward Fieldwork 7: Migrations and Immigrations—Mapping Movements and Power by spurse
Leaving from: BMW Guggenheim Lab
Traveling to: Environment of Lower East Side
Mode of transportation: walking
How would the city look to a naturalist or activist who did not discriminate between alien and native (species)? In light of the move away from the ideology of invasive species in contemporary science, is there an alternative way to look at how we and other creatures circulate and find comfort? Creative consulting and design collaborative spurse will lead a study walk through the Lower East Side together with New School's Professor of Anthropology Hugh Raffles during which they will introduce a new classification system for naturalists and immigration-rights activists alike.
Photo used by permission under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) License from kygp


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Time LineWelcome to the time line! Here you will get an idea of how time has fitted together. The BoD update major events such as hatchings or mid-winter. Members also have access to update events in their characters lives such as births, handfastings, and deaths. Want to add your own information? Go Here Of course with all these updates, and of course the use of our own 'Fuzzy Time' then all dates are only ever approximate! All dates entered are given in Pern Date. These, although similar to ours, are a little different. They list out the pass we are currently in (p), the turn into that pass (t), then the month (mm) and the day (dd). This is presented as p.t.mm.dd. Turn 51 of the Eighth Pass
All references to worlds and characters based on Anne McCaffrey's fiction are copyright© Anne McCaffrey 1967,2005, all rights reserved, and used by permission of the author. The Dragonriders of Pern® is registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, by Anne McCaffrey, used here with permission. Use or reproduction without a license is strictly prohibited. |


text: Can you believe that "Visit Your Local Quilt Shop Day" is just a week away, on January 24? It's the perfect time to check out your favorite Marcus collections including the Just Judie Quilt Competition, the newest Studio 37 collections and more! Take a look at the LQS list of participating quilt shops so far. And you can even enter their Fan Photo Contest, to win a shopping spree and a new Brother sewing machine, too! — Enjoy


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Major Pan-African Insurance Firm Rolls Back Insurance for Crypto Mining Equipment
Pan-African insurance firm Old Mutual will not provide coverage for crypto mining equipment due to the unregulated nature of the industry
Pan-Africaninsurance company Old Mutual has opted out of insuring cryptocurrency mining equipment due to the absence of regulation in the industry, local technology-focused new outlet ITWeb reported on June 10.
Following comprehensive research of the industry, Old Mutual has arrived at a decision not to insure equipment used for digital currency mining because of the unregulated nature of the industry.
Among other reasons, the company also named cryptocurrencies' exposure to fraudulent activity and modified electronic infrastructure of mining equipment that leads to overheating and other malfunctions.
Christelle Colman, an insurance expert at Old Mutual, said that "we have chosen not to provide cover for this type of risk as it is quite tricky to conduct a proper risk analysis of an unregulated fledgling industry that is already on the radar of financial authorities due to the unfortunate association with money laundering and cyber crime." Colman added:
"It is also a highly volatile industry that attracts a lot of speculators so there is no proper risk rating structure in the local market for this type of risk. Even doing a comprehensive inventory of the insured equipment is difficult because the value of the highly modified computer equipment is typically inflated and almost impossible to verify as it is usually imported from obscure suppliers in the Far East."
Old Mutual released an annual Savings and Investment Monitor survey for South Africa last July, which polled respondents on awareness of and attitude toward cryptocurrencies in the country. The study showed that respondents generally had a positive regard of digital currencies, with 38% of respondents agreeing with the statement "I wish I had invested in [crypto] before" and 71% agreeing that "You can make a lot of money with them."
At the same time, 43% of respondents agreed with the statement "They are bad news, like a pyramid scheme" and 53% said they do not understand how cryptocurrencies work. In terms of overall awareness, 40% of respondents answered that they were aware to varying degrees, while 60% said they were not aware of cryptocurrencies.
As reported in January of this year, the South African Reserve Bank issued a consultation paper assessing the benefits and risks of cryptocurrencies. In the paper, South Africa's government clarified that it did not intend to ban either cryptocurrency trading, or crypto payments at the time.


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John Henry Newman to J. Walker of Scarborough on Darwin's Theory of Evolution
The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman
The Oratory Bm May 22/68
I got Smith on the Pentateuch at once on your suggestion, and have been much interested in what I have read of it — but have not read enough to get into it as a whole [W. Smith, The Book of Moses or the Pentateuch in its Authority, Credibility, and Civilisation, London 1868]. Mr Beverly's work too has come, but with no supplemental chapter. Pray convey my acknowledgement to the unknown author [The Darwinian Theory of the Transmutation of Species examined by a Graduate of the University of Cambridge, London 1868]. It is a careful and severe examination of the theory of Darwin — and it shows, as is most certain he would be able to do, the various points which are to be made good before it can cohere. I do not fear the theory so much as he seems to do — and it seems to me that he is hard upon Darwin sometimes, which [sic] he might have interpreted him kindly. It does not seem to me to follow that creation is denied because the Creator, millions of years ago, gave laws to matter. He first created matter and then he created laws for it — laws which should construct it into its present wonderful beauty, and accurate adjustment and harmony of parts gradually. We do not deny or circumscribe the Creator, because we hold he has created the self acting originating human mind, which has almost a creative gift; much less then do we deny or circumscribe His power, if we hold that He gave matter such laws as by their blind instrumentality moulded and constructed through innumerable ages the world as we see it. If Mr Darwin in this or that point of his theory comes into collision with revealed truth, that is another matter — but I do not see that the principle of development, or what I have called construction, does. As to the Divine Design, is it not an instance of incomprehensibly and infinitely marvellous Wisdom and Design to have given certain laws to matter millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out, in the long course of those ages, those effects which He from the first proposed. Mr Darwin's theory need not then to be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill. Perhaps your friend has got a surer clue to guide him than I have, who have never studied the question, and I do not [see] that 'the accidental evolution of organic beings' is inconsistent with divine design — It is accidental to us, not to God.
P.S. Why is not the principle of generation atheistic, if that of development is? Did we not know the fact that species and races are drawn out in succession from one couple, we might say that it was a theory inconsistent with the doctrine of creation. And à fortiori, it might be urged, 'here the accidental meeting and marriage of two persons, or the sinful intercourse, will oblige the Almighty to create a soul at any moment.' Therefore (not only not the body, but) the soul is not created, but is the accidental consequence of the human will, etc. etc.
The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, edited by C.S. Dessain and T. Gornall, vol. XXIV (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 77-78.


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Tibet: International Observers Praise Tibetan Elections
An election observation mission including international parliamentarians and UNPO amongst other NGOs says that the Tibetan elections on March 20, 2011 were conducted in an orderly and positive way.
Below is a press statement by International Network of Parliamentarians for Tibet:
International Parliamentarians Praise Tibetan Elections:
Calls upon the International Community to support Tibetan democratic institutions at this historic moment
21 March, 2011, Dharamsala – The International Network of Parliamentarians for Tibet (INPaT), as part of a worldwide initiative, deployed a team of experts to conduct a Tibetan Election Observation Mission (TEOM) where Tibetans yesterday [March 20, 2011] voted to elect the Kalon Tripa (Chairman of the Tibetan Cabinet) and the 44 members of the 15th Tibetan Parliament in Exile (TPiE). TEOM delegations composed of parliamentarians observed polling stations in northern and southern India in addition to nations in Europe and North America.
This preliminary statement includes reports from all the above mentioned areas.
Unfortunately, we regret that the Nepalese government refused to allow Tibetans in their country to vote, setting a worrying trend for democracy in Nepal.
INPaT was formally invited by the Tibetan Parliament in Exile (TPiE) "to initiate a process of observing the final elections on the 20th of March 2011 in different parts of the world where Tibetan exiles vote for their leaders in the Cabinet and the Parliament."
INPaT TEOM praises the Tibetan people for their long standing commitment to democracy and the enthusiasm with which they embraced the elections held yesterday. It is remarkable that an exiled refugee community has been able to organize, for many decades, such an orderly managed democratic exercise.
The announcement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to relinquish His temporal and to concentrate His time on His spiritual and religious role and the promotion of secular ethics and religious harmony in the world, makes these elections not only historic but will contribute to further developing the Tibetan institutions in exile towards the creation of a full democratic system.
We have been impressed by the way in which the organization of elections has taken place over the last months, with the serious and effective implementation of a plan to:
-identify and register qualified voters, as shown by the fact that these elections reached the highest number ever of registered voters;
-coordinate the setup of the electoral process in several continents which resulted in a calm and positive election day atmosphere;
-guarantee the right of Tibetans to exercise their right to vote and to run in elections, by effectively promoting and informing eligible Tibetans to participate;
-ensure a level playing field for the candidates, both for Kalon Tripa and Parliamentary seats.
INPaT TEOM's final report on these elections, to be issued by the end of April, will contain recommendations to the new Parliament to improve the Tibetan democratic system by reviewing the electoral laws to reflect general international standards and in particular:
-electoral financing laws and regulations;
-participation of women;
-regional voting system.
The Tibetan example of the development of democratic institutions and systems are a model for nascent democracies around the world and we encourage the international community to assist the Tibetan institutions in exile to continue to evolve and improve on their success.
We would like to thank Tibetan Government in Exile, Tibetan Parliament in Exile and the Tibetan Election Commission and all other institutions, including Tibetan NGOs for providing full understanding, cooperation and assistance to our mission, and who were very generous to accommodating us.
Mr. Matteo Mecacci, Co-Chair, INPaT TEOM - +39 347 968 2837
Senator Consiglio Di Nino, INPaT TEOM Member - +1 613 943 1454
Ms. Tsering Jampa, INPaT Secretariat Coordinator - +31 6 2900 4547
Mr. Ngawang Choephel [Drakmargyapon], INPaT TEOM Coordinator - +91 (0)78 29221250
-- 133 Members from 33 worldwide Parliaments who took part in the 5th World Parliamentarians Convention on Tibet (18/19 November 2009, Rome) adopted the "Rome Declaration on Tibet" which constituted the International Network for Parliamentarians on Tibet (INPaT).


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Is al Qaeda becoming more powerful? Two years after Osama bin Laden was killed, there are fears the terrorist group is planning attacks from Yemen and other countries. Also, new revelations about NSA monitoring of US correspondence, and the fascinating case of Henrietta Lacks, the African American woman who died young from cervical cancer. Her cells would be used by science to save the lives of millions of people. Now her family has a say in what the future research will be. Madeleine Brand guest hosts.
Banner image: A police trooper checks a van at the entrance of Sanaa International Airport August 7, 2013. Al Qaeda's Yemen-based branch AQAP has been behind plots against Western targets and neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Photo: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters


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Mystery Hunt and the Scientific Endeavour
It can be hard to understand the appeal of spending three days, without sleep, solving what some have called "the hardest recreational puzzles in the world,"; but over this weekend, hundreds of people converged on the MIT campus to do just that, as part of MIT Mystery Hunt. To celebrate the finding of the coin, I'd like to share this little essay that I found in my files, which compares Mystery Hunt and the scientific endeavour. (If you are not familiar with Mystery Hunt, I recommend listening to the linked This American Life program.)
Thomas Kuhn, in his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, states that "normal science" is "puzzle solving": what he means is that the every day endeavors of scientists are the addressing of small, tractable problems, these problems are "puzzles" not "grand mysteries of the universe." Kuhn goes on to describe what is involved with normal science: generation of facts, increasing the fit between theory and observation, and paradigm articulation. We will see that, as one might expect, these activities are part of "normal" puzzle solving. But (perhaps more unexpectedly) Popperian falsification and Kuhnian revolutions also have something to say about this situation. There are limits to the analogy of puzzles to science, the perhaps most striking of which is that a puzzle has a single, definite solution. But because it is not possible to call up the puzzle writers midway through a puzzle and ask them, "Am I on the right track?" (you are only allowed to phone in the final answer) the intermediate steps still are somewhat informative of the practice of science. In this context, I argue that Popper assumes a microscopic view of scientific progress, whereas Kuhn assumes a macroscopic view of scientific progress.
What is a Mystery Hunt puzzle? This is a question that, at first glance, may seem to defy answering: puzzles can vary from a crossword to an album of images of birds to a single audio file of seemingly random electronic pitches. The answer is always a phrase, perhaps "KEPLERS THIRD LAW" or "BOOTS," but a puzzle, like a scientific problem, doesn't come with instructions for how to solve it. Thus, every Mystery Hunt puzzle starts off in Kuhn's pre-science stage: without any theory about how the puzzle works, puzzlers roll up their sleeves and start collecting miscellaneous facts that may be relevant to the puzzle at hand. If there are pictures of birds, one starts off identifying what the birds are; if there are short video clips of people waving flags, one starts off decoding the semaphore messages. This is a stage that doesn't require very much insight: there is an obvious thing to do. Some of the information collected may be irrelevant (just as the Linnaean classification of species was broadly modified in light of modern information about observable characteristics of plants and animals), but all-in-all this information forms a useful basis for theory formation. But while Popper doesn't have much to say about data collection, Kuhn's concept of the theory-ladenness of observation is important. The theory-ladenness of observation states that it is impossible to make an observation without some preconceptions and theories about how the world works. For example, a list of images of birds may suggest that each bird needs to be identified, but in the process of this identification it may be realized that the images corresponded directly to watercolor engravings from Audubon's birds of America (in which case the new question is, which plates?) Even during pre-science, small theories are continually being invented and falsified.
Once the data has been collected, a theory about how all the data is to be put together must be formed: this step is called "answer extraction". In regular science, forming the right theory is something that can take many, many years; for a puzzle, the process is accelerated by a collection of pre-existing theories that an experienced puzzler may attempt (e.g. each item has a numbering which corresponds to a letter) as well as hints that a puzzle writer may place in a puzzle's flavor text and title (e.g. "Song of birds" refers to "tweeting" refers to "Twitter", which means the team should take an extracted phrase to mean a Twitter account.) Naïve inductivism suggests that unprejudiced observation of the data should lead to a theory which explains all of the information present. However, puzzles are specifically constructed to resist this sort of straightforward observation: instead, what more frequently happens is akin to Popper's falsificationism, where theories are invented out of sheer creativity (or perhaps historical knowledge of previous puzzles) and then they are tested against the puzzle. To refer once again to the bird puzzle, one proposed theory may be that the first letter of the scientific names of the birds spells a word in the English language. When the scientific names are gathered and the first letters found not to form a word, the theory is falsified, and we go and look for something else to do. This makes the Popperian view highly individualistic: while only some people may come up with the "good ideas", anyone can falsify a theory by going out and doing the necessary calculation. Sophisticated falsification allows for the fact that someone might go out and do the calculation incorrectly (thus sending the rest of the puzzlers on a wild goose hunt until someone comes back to the original idea and realizes it actually does work.) However, it only explains the scientific endeavor at very high resolution: it explains the process for a single theory; and we'll see that Kuhn's paradigms help broaden our perspective on the overall puzzle solving endeavor.
Kuhn states that normal science organizes itself around paradigms, which are characterized by some fundamental laws (Maxwell's equations, Newton's laws) as well conventions for how these laws are to be used to solve problems. Unlike a theory, a paradigm cannot be "falsified", at least in the Popperian sense: a paradigm can accommodate abnormalities, which may resolve themselves after further investigation. The difference is one of scope. So, in a puzzle, while we might have a straightforwardly falsifiable theory "the first letters form a word," a more complicated, thematic idea such as "the puzzle is Dr. Who themed" is closer to a paradigm, in that the precise mechanism by which you get answer from "Dr. Who" is unspecified, to be resolved by "normal puzzling." The paradigm is vague, but it has "the right idea", and with sufficient effort, the details can be worked out. Which paradigm is to be worked on is a social process: if a puzzler comes in freshly to a puzzle and finds that a group of people is already working within one paradigm, he is more likely to follow along those lines. Of course, if this group is stuck, they may call in someone from the outside precisely to think outside of the paradigm. In this manner, revolutions, as Kuhn describes them, occur. When a paradigm is failing to make progress (e.g. failing to admit an answer), the puzzlers will continue to attempt to apply it until a convincing alternative paradigm comes along, at which point they may all jump to this new method. The revolution is compressed, but it still carries many common traits: including the lone puzzler who still thinks the old method will admit an answer with "just a little more work." (Sometimes they're right!)
We see a striking correspondence between the activities of a scientist working in a lab, and the activities of a scientist working on a Mystery Hunt puzzle. If you'll allow me to indulge in a little psychoanalysis, I think this similarity is part of the reason why Mystery Hunt is so appealing to people with a science, technology, engineering and maths background: in your every day life, you are faced with the most vicious puzzles known to man, as they are by definition the ones that have resisted any attempt to resolution. Months can go by without any progress. In Mystery Hunt, you are once again faced with some of the most vicious puzzles known to man. But there's a difference. You see, in Mystery Hunt, there is an answer. And you can find it.
Happy puzzling!


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Restrict parent access to sign-in/sign-out area at entrance of facility.
Show All Answers
1:15 groups with same staff when possible. Should not exceed 50 people or 50% of capacity.
Clean, sanitize, and disinfect frequently touched surfaces every 4 hours, disinfect supplies and equipment between each group. Maintain daily opening and closing sanitation schedule to ensure that all items are cleaned.
Reinforce frequent and proper handwashing upon checkin, every hour and anytime someone touches their face, sneezes or coughs. Masks are required per PHO#002-20.
Transport limited to 30 minutes on bus or van.
Staff will meet parents at designated entrance and will sign in/out each child (no sharing of pens).
Activities should encourage physical distancing, shared supplies and equipment should be disinfected throughout the day, larger group activities should be limited to 20 minutes, not to exceed 30 children at one time.
Food and beverages should be served in individual portions (not family style) and utensils should not be shared (disposable cups, plates, & utensils should be used when possible). Children bringing lunches from home should bring them in a disposable bag when possible. Meals and snacks should be consumed with assigned group and should not share space with other groups when eating. Careful cleaning and sanitizing procedures will be followed before and after food consumption.
Personal items should be contained and remain separate from other children's belongings. Staff should monitor children and other staff for signs and symptoms of illness and follow exclusion and reporting guidelines.


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August 11, 1999, Solar Eclipse Images
These are all images of the last eclipse of the millennium. The black object is the Moon, which is covering up the Sun. The white ring around the Moon is the Sun's corona, which is normally not seen.Courtesy of NASA
List of previous solar eclipses


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